Seattle University - Aegis Yearbook (Seattle, WA)

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THE ECHO behind them, and with scores of reliable witnesses, were on one side, while Hammerstein and Parker, the deans of the city’s legal talent, were cross-examining with a brilliancy and a sharpness that caused the courtroom to hold its breath. Though the two veterans stabbed the witnesses with shrewd remarks, though they interrogated cuttingly and even insulted them, though they brought forth a caustic wit, a tongue as sharp as a rapier's point, the witnesses for the state were firm and their testimony could not be shaken. One old man brought tears to the eyes of many in the crowded courtroom. In halting, countrified language he told of the defendant visiting his home in the suburbs and insinuating himself into the confidence and home-life of the family. Three months after he abruptly left, the two small girls of the family, rosy-cheeked twins of ten years, were sent home from school as dope fiends. They had been caught selling the white snow to their schoolmates for money to buy more of the soul and body-destroying poison: and when questioned they had accused Reynolds of starting them on their downward path. This piece of evidence was invaluable and counteracted all that the defense had been able to assert. Tears and angry, shocked faces appeared when the Prosecutor showed one of the twins as a proof of the old man’s story. The sight was terrible: a child, as nearly as anyone could guess, of ten or eleven years, with a drawn yellow face and two eyes livid as hot coals, giving the child an appearance of a death’s-head. The small body was emaciated and quivering. The golden hair, a fitting crown for any beauty, was the sole remaining natural quality, and it was the contrast that brought tears to the jurymen—that tightened the rope around the prisoner’s neck. The cross-examination was finished: the defendant’s lawyer completed his plea. Rochet rose. The whole courtroom waited with baited breath on his first words. In simple, though forceful language he told the history of Reynolds and of the present case, showing an astonishing knowledge of the events in the criminal’s life leading up to the trial. He told of victims the dope trust had enslaved, picturing young boys who had been ruined and made criminals, girls and women who had been induced to leave virtuous lives, to sell their health, their 19

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THE ECHO cumstanccs as the Prosecutor himself. Rochet realized that unless Burns turned up within a few days he himself would have to handle the case, with several picked deputies as helpers. Therefore he began to prepare his brief and jumped into the pre-triai hush of the big lawyer. It was Monday morning; in an hour he would start the preliminary picking of jurymen, and soon he would be presenting his opening arguments. The four days intervening had rushed past like a wildfire on a prairie and in the hurry of preparations the deputy prosecutor had barely taken time to eat. Newspapers had written up the young attorney and on him they had placed the burden of, in their own words, the biggest trial in ten years. For the police had failed: no trace of John Burns could be found. He had disappeared as completely as if the earth had swallowed him up. It was brought home to Bill in rather a disagreeable fashion when friends jokingly asked if he carried a detective about with him?” Beside the touch of fear he felt regarding his personal safety he was going through his first real test; for on his manner of handling this case depended his future. For any young man, but a short time out of the U.” and with less ability than Bill Rochet it would have been foolhardiness and political suicide to attempt to handle such a trial. But for him it was the chance of a lifetime, a golden opportunity, and he did not propose to let it slip through his fingers. The prisoner was brought into the crowded courtroom, a courtroom filled to overflowing with men and women hoping for his condemnation and expecting William Rochet to see to it that he be condemned. George Reynolds was brought in: a thin, sharp-featured individual. Cunning there was in the eyes that flashed at each member of the picked jury, and cruelty in the sharp-pointed nose and thin-slitted mouth. 'The best criminal lawyers in the city were arrayed at the defendant’s desk and Rochet knew that his hands would be full. The battle of wits began. Rochet and his deputy prosecutor, cool and collected, with all the force of state and city 18

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THE ECHO v honor, their souls, for the white poison. In vivid language the young lawyer, with all the accumulated fire and imagery of his French ancestors, told of the reasons why the backbone of the dope trust should be broken and why Reynolds as the leader should be punished. He compared him with an insidious octopus who had entwined his victims and threatened to drag the whole nation beneath the surface of civilization, down into mire of his existence. In a masterful conclusion he finished: “You stand there on the witness stand. George Reynolds, pleading Not guilty,’ and yet your face belies your words. Not guilty,' you say to the dope selling charges preferred against you: Innocent.’ you reiterate, of selling soul and body destroying poison to these children, but your pallid countenance, your hot breath tainted with the character of the devil you serve, your eyes—windows of your soul—if you still possess a vestige of that noble gift of God—are dark and satanic and shrunken, and shriek in noiseless but penetrating tones the exact contrary of your lying tongue. “Here is a miserable, shuddering and shattered wreck, a mere handful of nerves, with a system poisoned by cocaine and morphine. Once. O how long ago. this small body, now doomed to die. was a bright, healthy, red-cheeked girl. Ten summers had touched her golden tresses and tinted her laughing face: every day was a new adventure: life stretched out before her in a silver thread, like a path that leads to unknown Edens and fairy-like Paradises. “But. and here the red grasp and sinister influence of Hell, in the person of this prisoner you see before you, took hold, and this fair child was turned into a more horrid ruin of physical and moral self than we can contemplate. “Reynolds, no punishment : no death can satisfy or remedy what you have done, but only that your kind may turn from this nefarious traffic by the example of your punishment, I do ask the Court to hang you by the neck until dead. If my tongue could express my thoughts, your soul would shrink and shrivel under the lashing, and if my eyes could burn and consume you. a drop, if there is that much good in your diabolical make-up. I